Charophytes of Australia’s Northern Territory – I. Tribe Chareae
Michelle T. Casanova
A B C E * and Kenneth G. Karol D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Birdwood Avenue, South Yarra, Vic. 3141, Australia.
B Federation University, Mount Helen, Vic. 3350, Australia.
C The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, UK.
D The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, USA.
E Present address: 273 Casanova Road, Westmere, Vic. 3351, Australia.
Australian Systematic Botany 36(1) 38-79 https://doi.org/10.1071/SB22023
Submitted: 14 July 2022 Accepted: 2 March 2023 Published: 30 March 2023
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
This study of Northern Territory charophytes documents 22 species in 3 of the genera in tribe Chareae, family Characeae, including 15 previously described species (Chara benthamii, C. erythrogyna, C. globularis, C. karolii, C. lucida, C. porteri, C. protocharoides, C. setosa, C. submollusca, C. wightii, C. zeylanica, Lamprothamnium capitatum, L. compactum, L. stipitatum, Lychnothamnus barbatus) of which 2 are new for the Australian flora (C. erythrogyna and C. wightii), as well as 5 varieties raised to species rank (C. aridicola, C. arnhemensis, C. bancroftii, C. behriana, C. duriuscula), and 2 newly described species (C. lamprothamniformis, C. schultae). Three previously reported species in the tribe (C. braunii, C. corallina, C. fibrosa) are not recorded from the Northern Territory in this study, as previous records were based on erroneous identifications or localities. Although Northern Territory specimens of Lychnothamnus barbatus have not been seen, it has been included in this treatment, because it occurs in south-eastern Queensland, the Gulf of Carpentaria, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. A key, illustrations and descriptions of all the species are provided.
Keywords: Chara, charophyte, Lamprothamnium, Lychnothamnus, morphology, oospore, taxonomy, Northern Territory.
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